


We find ourselves wanting everything.

by ladyrocketdale (Maiucha)



Category: Football RPF, Sports RPF
Genre: AU, M/M, Sergio Ramos is a great cook, alternative universe, cooking show au, discussion about baked apples, important cooking stuff related to the plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-16
Updated: 2014-08-16
Packaged: 2018-02-12 01:27:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2090613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maiucha/pseuds/ladyrocketdale
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sergio Ramos is a well known chef with his own tv-show where he makes quick recipes trying to prove people they can cook fast and good meals. David Beckham is his friend and producer. When the lines among their relationship start to look blurry, David needs to ask.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We find ourselves wanting everything.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this for the first round of exchange at [fslashexchange](http://fslashexchange.livejournal.com) back at 2011, it's a complete au where Sergio hosts a cooking show and David works with him, outside the cameras. loosely based in "Recetas rápidas con Pablo Massey". thanks to [lauchis](http://lauchis.tumblr.com) for the support and the beta. originally posted [here](http://fslashexchange.livejournal.com/4483.html) and [.](http://isabeautifulday.livejournal.com/10027.html)

"I want you all to pay attention, because this is a really easy recipe, and I can assure you it will take you less time to make this than calling delivery food or buying take-out on your way home…" Sergio starts every show with the same words, barely altered, because with those words he summarizes what his program is about.

David can't help but smile behind the camera when he hears the little speech. Sergio is trying to convince people to go to their kitchens and work on them, in place of asking for already made and warm food. David thinks it's a lost cause but Sergio doesn't give up, he even has a notebook full of recipes to make in less than thirty minutes. David can't complain about that, and not only because that's not his job, but also because of the way Sergio gets when you tell him "no one is actually going to cook that, you know?" Sergio likes to believe that someone will, and David likes Sergio so agreeing is pretty much a must.

This time, Sergio is using ground meat to make sticks and he's adding a bunch of those weird condiments his mother surely introduced to him when he was a kid, as if most people would have them lying around on their houses. David isn't trying to be an asshole, he knows anything can be found on the streets of Madrid, but things like that add on his favor of this being a lost cause, because people don't only have to cook their meals but also search for every ingredient in them. He can hear Sergio saying "you can replace this with…" and rolls his eyes to it, that's not the real recipe and probably Sergio (and his mom, somewhere in Camas) suffers when he says that.

Sergio is very special about his food; that's why David can't fully get why he's hosting a show about express recipes where everything has to be done (cooked and finished) in real time, and not a laid back show where he can talk about the marvelous of gipsy food, tell stories about his childhood and his discovering of the wonders in the kitchen and all those things Sergio likes to do with David on the phone. Not that David minds Sergio talking, don't get him wrong, but it would be nice to get full eight hours of sleep every now and then and not ending up with half a bottle of wine sitting alone on his couch listening to someone ramble about how oregano brings out the best of each food if used in the proper amount and can make almost everything taste better (which is true, as far as David has been trying, but that's not the point), and getting slightly turned on about it.

"This is the kind of food you make for someone special…" Sergio's voice becomes softer when he says those sorts of things, and there's when David remembers this show's real mission: motivating young people, and mostly males, to cook. That's the reason why Sergio always talks about how the food would be perfect for a dinner date and how it may work as an aphrodisiac. David has heard everything by now and he's not even moved by Sergio's words when he's pretty sure he's acting them. Also because by now, after about a year of working together, David has gotten to know the different ways Sergio's voices changes according to what he's saying and to whom; so he's not particularly astonished by this tone.

 

"See?" that's Sergio's nice way to say 'I told you so' when he's done cooking. It took him twenty-two minutes by clock to finish his meal, decorate the plate, sit down in the couch in front of the small table they have to show off the finished food and grab a glass of wine. "And if you're timing your delivery, they probably aren't in your neighborhood yet."

David wants to say "they surely are" just to annoy Sergio, but he has to pay attention to his actual work to make sure recording ends right. It does, and then everything goes on like always: Sergio's mouth becomes a huge satisfied grin when people congratulate him for a good show and as soon as the cameras are off, everyone is staring at the warm plate asking for a bit to try.

It's ten in the morning and they're eating meat from a stick, David is disgusted by the people he works with.

"You had breakfast about an hour ago, how can you eat that?" he asks, sounding as horrified as he feels, to one of the camera guys.

"It's good" the man answers, trying to swallow before talking and David appreciates the gesture, honestly.

"What do you have against my food?" Sergio asks while taking off his white chef coat and giving him a half smile. David stares at him for a half a minute before answering.

"Nothing," he says, simply, "your food is more than all right, but your food at ten a.m. when I can still taste coffee and pastries in my mouth makes me sick."

"Oh, David," Sergio replies and something on his tone makes David think he's not going to like what he's going to hear next, "you gotta brush your teeth better, man."

David just flips him off; he cares very little for professionalism as he walks away with Sergio's laugh as company.

/*\

 

David is back at his office a little after one in the afternoon. He's more tired than usual but it makes sense, they've been recording during the whole week to finish the episodes for the rest of the month. David isn't even sure what day it is, since it hasn't been any different from the day before or the one before that or—

There's a package on his desk. He didn't leave a package there and his secretary didn't tell him there was something waiting for him and David hates, just hates, things out of place. And surprises, like this one, David hates as well.

He eyes the packaging for a minute or less, trying to figure it out without opening it, without even touching it. It's silver and not bigger than a bowl or a plate… a plate. That's what it is. He touches the sides of it, noticing immediately that it's hot and trying to think what it's doing on his desk. Finally, David sits down in front of it and decides it's time to open it; when he's about to do it he notices the packed fork and knife with a white napkin and a shiny yellow post-it that says "better time?" and nothing else. David would recognize that handwriting anywhere, mostly because he's the one that has to read Sergio's notes for each show.

He smiles to himself; this day has been an improvement in comparison to the rest of the week, because he's having a delicious hot meal in time.

Ah, it's Thursday, by the way; only one more day of filming before the weekend.

/*\

 

Sergio calls him a quarter past midnight and as the two first rings go by, David wonders if he could pretend to be asleep for once. As he reads Sergio's name on his phone he knows he can't, because the only time he did it he couldn't actually fall asleep for an hour and ended up calling Sergio back. He hates himself for this when it's eight in the morning and he has to wake up, but at nights, he needs it like the glass in front of him to relax. David hates dualities almost as much as he hates surprises.

He barely gets to say 'hi' and Sergio is already talking, he's saying something about adding a dessert to the recipe he has ready for tomorrow, "something simple, you know, quick," he explains, because he's sure that time will be more than enough.

"What do you have in mind?"

"Apples."

"Apples?" David repeats.

"Yes, baked apples."

"Oh, my grandmother used to make them for me and my sisters when I was a kid, I liked them," David smiles to himself at the memory, and adds as an afterthought, "or I liked the vanilla ice-cream she gave me with them."

"How did she make them?" Sergio asks, natural curiosity on his voice, as David can tell.

"How the hell am I supposed to know? I was ten, or less."

"When I was ten I knew how to bake a cake and how to roast almonds to put on top of it; baked apples were in charge of my little cousin," Sergio is using his arrogant tone and if David didn't know him better he'd say he's trying to humiliate him. "My cousin was five, for the record."

David rolls his eyes, he sighs loudly on the phone to humor Sergio, showing he was somehow affected by his word and mostly to bother him, because David knows his friend hates it when people breathe on the phone to him.

"When I was ten I was too busy trying to become a soccer player, excuse me if I missed my queue in the kitchen with the rest of the girls like you."

Sergio laughs, like every time David points out that he's a girl for liking to cook, mostly because both of them know he doesn't mean that at all.

"By the age of seventeen I made my girlfriend a whole dinner all by myself, and got laid that night. What where you doing around those days?"

"Fulfilling my career as a director outside England, considering I was about twenty-seven when you were seventeen," he answers with so much intention it sounds like an important response, when he knows he hasn't answered what was asked.

"Oh, fuck you," Sergio says, but David can see him smiling.

"What? You asked," David says, defensive tone on his voice, and before adding anything else to keep teasing Sergio, he remembers something so he changes his intentions and says: "she used cinnamon, I'm sure of that."

"Well, of course she did. Who on their sane mind wouldn't use cinnamon with apples?"

"Hey, hey, I'm trying to help here."

"I know, I'm just still hassling you," Sergio's tone isn't tinted with anything now and David adores his voice like that, just natural, simple. "Cinnamon and sugar on top of it, yes?"

"Mhm, that, for sure. She used that to cover everything that was inside," David grins to himself, "it had raisins, Lynne didn't like them and put them on Joanne's plate, I think neither my mother nor my grandmother ever noticed that."

"Oh, stuffed apples," Sergio says, and there's some disappointment on his voice.

"Uhm, sorry?"

"It's all right, just," Sergio takes a second before talking and David can guess he's sipping something, "well, those aren't real baked apples, that's just the English way."

"Considering I am English, and so is my grandmother, and the place where this story I've shared with you happens is England, it kind of makes sense, don't you think?"

"Asshole," Sergio laughs, "my apples are easier."

"You are easier."

"Wow, that's an easy, cheap and childish comeback. Are you feeling well?"

"It's the alcohol talking, the red wine hits better and sooner, as you know."

Sergio doesn't say anything after that and David sighs, just not into the phone this time. He remembers the reason why this conversation is taking so long to end is because he asks things like the one he's about to ask now, and that gets Sergio back on talking mood. And once there, Sergio can't leave, at all.

"How are your apples done, Sergio?" he finally says, and he can feel the happiness in the change of the breathing pattern on Sergio at the other side of the phone, and that's just wrong, but David has stopped caring a while ago.

Sergio tells him why he doesn't fill the apples with anything, he says it's all about a good wine, butter, sugar and cinnamon; and that there's no need to remove the seeds and the full core of it, just the tip, because there's something wonderfully unique about the taste of baked apples made like that. Sergio uses big words and he has even names for different kinds of apples, David listens while silently sips on his red wine.

 

/*\

 

Sergio starts with dessert, which he never does and David is a bit confused until he reads his time schedule where it explains that apples take longer than soup.

David hears Sergio talk about apples again, about how the red or the green ones both taste good in this recipe and how the person cooking ("or that special someone you're cooking for" he says, and gives the camera a furtive smirk) must decide which one they prefer. Sergio repeats some of the things he said last night; he doesn't talk about his grandmother saying that they needed to eat the apples' core to find truth in their lives, but he says that it's a very dear meal in his family. When he sets them in the oven and says that they will be done by the end of the show, he quickly mentions what David told him about empty apples full with raisins and sugar and a few other things Sergio himself adds and David feels stupidly accomplished as if he had actually helped.

Sergio then prepares watercress and mushroom cream soup that's ready in time for him to set a dish in the table and then check on the apples. He talks against delivery food and take out as usual, stating the wonders of the homemade food once and speaking in favor of the smells of a kitchen where a meal is being made, saying how smell can be hypnotic and can make anyone hungry. David barely listens to the speech, as he's indeed hungry thanks to the smell of baked apples, something he hasn't eaten since he's ten, basically.

 

"Is this a better morning taste?" Sergio asks, handing him a plate when the work is over. David looks up to him to meet the huge grin on his face. Even if his words could have a hint of something like malice, the expression he gives erases that idea.

"Yes, it's actually very healthy to eat a fruit in the middle of the morning," David says before trying his food. Sergio doesn't reply to that, instead he gets distracted with someone asking about the soup. David would have preferred the company, but at least the apples are good.

 

/*\

 

'Two weeks break, what are you gonna do with so much free time?' says the text that wakes him up on the first Monday morning where he could sleep in. It's a little after ten and David didn't want to know anything with being out of bed before twelve, at least. It's been ages since he last slept in. Hell, he thinks he hasn't slept more than six hours since he left England four years ago (he knows he's overreacting, he also doesn't care).

He considers not answering and turning on his bed to keep sleeping, but he knows he couldn't. He's awake now, and he won't be falling sleep any time soon. He hates Sergio for that. Sighing he turns on the TV, just to see how the world started without him and grabs his glasses from his nightstand to read about the weather before answering Sergio's text with one word: 'sleeping'. No less than two minutes after that, he gets a reply. It's also a single word: 'lie' it reads, and David barely snorts before closing his phone and setting it aside.

Of course, Sergio calls him.

"I was thinking about doing a road trip," he says without even saying good morning, and he sounds so awake that it makes David hate him more.

"What? Why? Where? Why?" he doesn't make sense, but in his head neither does Sergio.

"A road trip, because I have the time, back to Sevilla, because I have the time, like I said."

David is going to hang up on Sergio for being so awake he can mock him, he really is.

"Anyway," says Sergio before David can move the phone away, "I was feeling today was a pancake day when I woke up, so I made pancakes. But I made a lot, so, want some?"

"I'm still in bed—" David plans to take this chance to bitch at Sergio about the wake-up text, about how these are their free weeks and they should be resting and Sergio should stop cooking for once. But he can't because Sergio is talking before he can even go on with his complaint.

"Awesome, can I use the key you gave me for emergencies, then?"

"They key I gave you…?" David blinks and sits up, "please tell me you're not at my door."

"I'm more like getting into your living room now."

"Oh my God."

"Do you want coffee or tea with your pancakes?"

David hangs up on him. Sergio brings him tea, David pretends to be insulted when stereotyped with a "you're an English man, you must like tea" but the pancakes smell really good and he does like tea, so it doesn't last.

 

The two-three free weeks Sergio basically lives in David's house; at least he could convince Sergio that it wasn't the right time for a trip to Sevilla or to any place outside Madrid, no matter how close it was.

The first clue David had that Sergio was spending so much time at his house was when he found that he actually had a cupboard on his kitchen with spices. If he recalled correctly (and he did) he only owned cinnamon, black peppermint, salt and oregano; now he is in front of over twenty different colors of small herbs in tiny mason jars and he has no idea what use half or three-quarters of them have. Sergio has been experimenting with food and David has been his first taste subject, and that's not actually new. But still, David feels like something isn't right.

"So," he starts that very night after dinner where they tried steak with roasted fennel, and that David timed in twenty-five minutes and thirty-eight seconds, "when are you moving fully with me?"

Sergio gives him an odd look, so David points out with his fingers the stand where all the herbs are behind the closed door. Sergio barely moves his head before getting what David is talking about.

"That's nothing," Sergio dismisses, "I was barely upgrading your kitchen and therefore your cuisine. If I was moving with you it would involve a revolution with pans, pots, silverware and assorted kitchen supplies."

"Revolution?" David says, lifting an eyebrow.

"Revolution," Sergio nods, David doesn't push it. A day after their talk, he notices a pan that doesn't belong to him and a set of knives he's never seen in his life; he says nothing about it.

 

/*\

 

Working leads them to routine again, David complains about salty food at ten a.m. and every once in a while he gets a package in time for lunch with a warm homemade meal. Sergio does many of the recipes they've shared during the break; he still uses the same speech, still complains about deliveries and tries to convince people on the other side of the screen that cooking isn't hard and that they should try it.

Behind the camera, David grins at him when he says things like "I tried this for the first time while having dinner with a friend" because he knows he's talking about him. He gets so used to that part of the speech after a week too, that he doesn't even notice when it stops saying 'friend' and starts saying 'special someone'.

Until he does.

 

"Are we dating?" he asks Sergio, who has been talking about the right way to find a good type of Camembert cheese for about ten minutes now.

"What? No," Sergio's voice sounds confused and David should have noticed this wasn't the sort of thing you talk over the phone. "No, if we were dating you would know, believe me, you would."

"You constantly cook for me, you've spent your free weeks with me, basically moving to my house, you've said odd things at your show," David says, trying to point out the things he has noticed to Sergio, "clearly you're sending messages."

"Still, that doesn't mean we're dating, like I said, if we were, you'd know for sure."

"Oh really?" David asks, losing the serious tone he had for a moment.

"Of course, I give awesome blowjobs, which would make you remember."

After that Sergio goes back to talking about cheese and David doesn't say anything else for the rest of the conversation. He can't, he's too busy stopping his very vivid imagination.

 

/*\

 

Sergio confronts him in his office a week. He has no food with him, neither a tape, so it's not about lunch or about the show. David stares at him from his door as soon as he enters.

"I made dessert first, who on Earth makes dessert first?" Sergio asks, his voice solemn.

"That was supposed to be a clue, too?" David stares at him, ignores Sergio's lips which have been the main focus of his attention during the whole past week, and just looks at him, trying to make sense, "how the hell was I going to notice that?"

"I don't know, but you should have!" Sergio crosses his arms in front of his chest; his face doesn't show as much inflexibility as his body does, and David can tell he even knows he's being irrational.

"Oh my God, you're an idiot," David sighs, and reaches to grab Sergio's wrist to pull him closer again, "I can't believe I'm friends with you, or that I would date you."

"I can cook. You know I've been right from the start, food can be very useful when trying to woo someone."

"You started this show to get a boyfriend," it doesn't sound like a question, because David doesn't think of it as one, it's just the plain truth.

"You say that like it's a bad thing," Sergio shrugs; they're kissing before David can even laugh.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Sergio's show, just like most of the recipes used and some of his words during that show are inspired in an Argentinean chef, Pablo Massey, who hosts a show called "Quick recipes" with the same intentions than Sergio. I wrote this for [lady_quark](http://lady-quark.livejournal.com) who wanted any AU involving the two of them, I came up with this idea watching a cooking channel of course and it seemed fun and fitting. I'm reposting here because I want all my stories (or most of them at least) stored somewhere.
> 
> Thanks for reading :)


End file.
